The Home of the Geek!

Hello again, everyone!  Time to touch base on how I’m trying to improve my life.

Today’s topic is caffeine.

Now I’m not an advocate of excess amounts of caffeine.  Generally, I think humanity is too reliant on overdosing on caffeine just to get by.  And of course, if you have health or religious reasons for abstaining, power to you!

That being said, I do often need a bit of a pick me up to keep going at a higher energy.  Now for myself, I find where I live dictates what caffeine I partake in.  In Arizona I was able to get by with a can of Green Tea.  In Washington, I do need that Starbucks coffee.  I imagine it has to do with sunshine and climate.  With the lack of sunshine and cold weather, a green tea doesn’t cut it.  Unfortunately... I don’t like the taste of coffee.  Usually I would put so much cream and sugar in my coffee that it was as pale as my skin by the end of it.  But as you can imagine, this meant that it was more of a desert than a pick-me-up and honestly I was probably getting more energy from the sugar than the coffee.

So what I do now is stopping at a Starbucks on the way to work.  This way I only have coffee on my work days and go caffeine free on my days off.  My usual order is a Latte with Heavy Cream instead of milk and with a sugar free syrup for flavor.  Sadly, Starbucks only has one sugar free flavor... whereas places like Dutch Bros and Big Foot have COUNTLESS sugar free syrups.  Including sugar-free caramel... which I don’t understand but it is a thing!  You can also get plenty of sugar free syrups for your own coffees at home.  But Starbucks is behind the times here... Here’s hoping they pick up the slack!

Happy Lunar New Year, Everyone!!

For those who don’t follow my twitter, I’ve been trying to better my health and I’ve found the best way to do that is to try and get the biggest support system I can and be HONEST with them.

So today, I’m going to start a weekly update on some things I’m doing and welcome any feedback and advice and hopefully we can all progress together!  I’m doing this on tumblr because it’s easier to ramble here... don’t judge me.

So welcome to my first Self-Care Sunday!

So today I am 9% to my goal which is not much but every little helps.  And today I want to talk about something important.

Meditation

Now while I am trying to improve my physical health, spiritual and mental health is a huge part of that.  So I actually make a point to mediate twice a day.  But honestly, even once or twice a week can be enough to make a huge impact on your mental state.

Now I’ve been meditating since I was in high school so it comes naturally to me but there are a lot of resources out there if you’re just getting started.  Some are free... some not so much.  Find what works for you!  And if you’re of the religious persuasion, there are many ways of connecting to the spiritual in any faith.  Morning and evening prayers, centering prayers, liturgical music... whatever you need to get in touch with the spiritual.  And if you’re atheist?  ...Sorry, can’t help you.

In my case, I actually start the day meditating.  Some people jump out of bed in the morning saying “Thank God for another glorious day!!”  But me?  I usually want to lie in bed saying “Lord, give me the strength to get through another day.”  And so I both ask for that strength and give myself that strength too.  I need a moment to adjust to being alive again, so I make it a point to hit the snooze button every morning.  And in that 3-9 minutes I just take a moment to breathe.  Just be aware of my body and my surroundings.  I try not to think about what I have to do that day quite yet (despite my hungry cats) and I just focus on being.  Now you may ask “But how do you keep yourself from falling asleep again?”  Well uh... OK, I do fall back asleep more often that I would like to admit.  But that’s OK, likely my mind and body needed that little extra rest.  I just have to be sure I’m ready to face the day when the alarm goes off a second time.

The second time I meditate is right before I go to bed.  This is a much longer mediation, usually around 30 minutes.  I have a few methods I like to use for this.  There are many videos out there for meditation.  Either walking you through one or just soothing sights and sounds to help calm you.  In my case I don’t use those for a few reasons.  As someone who has done this a long time, the instructional voice is more distracting than helpful.  And the videos cast light into my room which is what I’m trying to avoid.  I turn down the lights an hour before meditating.  I also make a point of turning off my computer and TV at this point but I will admit it’s harder to let go of my phone... but I do attempt to look at the screen more sparingly.  So instead I just listen to calming music (although white noise is just as valid).  I either listen to a half hour playlist or turn on the iheartradio app and put on the half hour sleep timer (the drawback of this is the adds but if you’re able to pay for add free it might work for you).  As you can imagine, I do this as I attempt to fall asleep.  The timer is critical but I’ll go over that later.  First, what’s important is the mental state going in.  I begin to meditate on the day.  Not everything I did wrong, but everything I did right.  Some days may seem like a failure but the best way to improve is not focus on what you got wrong but on what went well and vowing to repeat such patterns going forward.  Even if all you did was get out of bed, brush your teeth, wash your face... whatever successes you had, focus on them.  As for the limit to the music, as I mentioned I do this meditation to more easily fall asleep.  If the music ends and I’m still awake enough to be aware of it, it means I’m having insomnia and I need to restart.  I’ll go into more detail how I do this some other week.

How’ve you guys been?